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"Brace yourself, ads are coming" - and you can vote on them.  Of course, you may choose to give every single one a thumbs down, but that's Reddit's problem.  They're the ones with the new ads, and they're the ones with the new voting system.

Chris Winfield ("skore") spotted the official Reddit blog post; there's not much to it, frankly, except for a promise from Reddit that "we've specifically asked for ads with no moving parts, and we're not rearranging any content to make room for them."

Yet Winfield went on to write about his find in the Cre8asite Forum.  "[I]t's a really interesting proposition and I think it will require the people who advertise with them to do something a bit different to engage people to actually want to vote," he stated.  "It could be great or terrible for an advertiser but at least you can hopefully get some immediate feedback on what you are offering."

Of course, feedback may not translate into sales.  How many funny commercials can you recall that you can't associate with a product?  Still, expect some attempts to game the system.  "I would also imagine that lots of Reddit advertisers will be opening up Reddit accounts and voting/commenting . . ." Winfield wrote.

If you'd like to look at a condensed version of the thread on Cre8asite, Tamar Weinberg provides some illuminating excerpts.  If you have a lot more time on your hands, well . . . there are about 4,000 words' worth of comments available through this discussion at Reddit.